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Team:UC-Merced/Safety
From 2012.igem.org
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1. Would any of your project ideas raise safety issues in terms of researcher safety,public safety, or environmental safety?
UC Merced requires researchers to undertake lab safety training prior to working in lab on a yearly basis. This ensures researchers are properly trained in handling of hazardous materials. Furthermore, due to the handling of microorganisms such as e. coli our advisor has taken the liberty of personally instructing us of proper conduct in the laboratory. The e.coli that will be used in this lab are primarily lab strains intended for use in laboratory settings. In addition, our final modified organism will primarily be used in bioreactors. If such organisms were to be released into the environment there would be no immediate danger or impact.
2. Do any of the new BioBrick parts (or devices) that you made this year raise any safety issues?
The BioBrick parts being developed will not pose any safety issues. These parts are utilized primarily for altering metabolic processes such as fermentation. Our BioBricks are solely intended to modify the fermentation pathway in means of obtaining only hydrogen as the final byproduct.
3. Is there a local biosafety group, committee, or review board at your institution?
The Office of Environmental Health & Safety at the University of California, Merced is responsible for all issues pertaining to biosafety and other safety hazard concerns. EH&S has no issues or concerns with our project at this time.
4. Do you have any other ideas how to deal with safety issues that could be useful for future iGEM competitions? How could parts, devices and systems be made even safer through biosafety engineering?
One safety mechanisms that could be utilized would be to modify the organism to trigger cell death in the absence or presence of a stimulus. However in order to proceed with this feature, we would have to identify a stimulus that can be used as well as locate genes that can be utilized to program such a feature into an organism.
Use this page to answer the questions on the safety page.
